


157. god's country

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [271]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 01:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10478565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “You took my knife,” Helena says, and out of her mouth it sounds an accusation but in her head it sounded like a plea. Thismeanssomething, not-Beth, it has to mean something.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: reference to abuse]
> 
> ...this is a divergence from the scene in Maggie's apartment, in case that doesn't come through.

She’s warm and she smells like sharp soap and she’s terrified. Helena can tell all these things from where she’s kneeling on the ground, watching this woman shake and try to be brave. She’s terrified. Helena spreads a sweating palm on her knee, presses it into the ground to stop that leg from trembling. _I can save you_ , Helena says, and she can. She’s sure of it. There’s something inside of this woman that isn’t inside the other copies, like Helena’s knife inside the sheath at her side. Like Helena’s knife in her hand, Helena’s knife knocking Helena’s hand away.

“Right, ‘cause we have a connection,” says the stranger. Her voice is shaking. She keeps shaking. She is pointing a gun at Helena and because she is holding a gun she has taken her hand off the knife. Helena leans over her, one hand on the seat of the chair and the other palm resting on the knife at her hip. This close she smells even more like soap – the kind men use when they are trying to be warriors. Real warriors, Helena knows, don’t smell like soap at all. Blood and shit. Sweat. If Helena got the knife – if Helena cut this woman right now – she would bleed, and it would be right. Helena knows exactly what Helena smells like. They would smell the same, if this stranger stopped pretending.

“You took my knife,” she says, and out of her mouth it sounds an accusation but in her head it sounded like a plea. This _means_ something, not-Beth, it has to mean something.

“Get _down_ ,” barks the woman who is not Beth. She tries to jab her gun into Helena’s wound again but Helena knows her, now, and grabs her wrist. The frantic beat-beat-beating of that pulse, oh, she’s terrified. Helena’s fingers circle around the skin of the stranger’s wrist. Helena is delirious with it, dizzy with it – or maybe just dizzy from the bleeding in her side. Whichever. Both of these things are the same thing.

“You can’t feel it?” she says. She presses her thumb harder into that bird-flight pulse, but besides its speeding up there is no response.

“ _Down_ , Helena,” says the woman again. Helena sighs and gets back on her knees. She watches the trembling fingers in front of her. She does not take her eyes away from those fingers.

“What _happened_ to you?” whispers Helena’s stranger, voice terrified. What happened to _you_ , Helena could ask. Who made you scared? You can see it on my skin, what happened to me. I wanted to show you. I wanted you to see. Take off your jacket and show me who hurt you, because I know somebody did. I could hurt them back. I could make sure no one ever hurts you again.

Helena says none of those things. Instead she sighs, inches forwards on her knees, rests her face against that same knee. Smells like laundry-soap. Helena can’t remember the last time she washed her clothes. She closes her eyes, waits for the hand to slap her away again.

“God.” Weak voice, strong word. Blasphemy, probably. Spit wells in Helena’s mouth but – blasphemy! – she doesn’t let it to the floor. She’s so tired. She is losing so much blood and she wants this, she does, Tomas will want her to kill this copy eventually but Helena doesn’t have to kill her _yet_ and once she’s dead Helena can carry this forever. For the rest of her life, this one moment of warm fabric under her skin.

When a hand settles in her hair she goes stiff and then drops it, fast, before – before this woman can get mad at her. Helena’s eyes open. Helena’s pulse is just another bird flying away from her. Fingers tangled in her hair. Shaking-sweating-fingers, anxious and clumsy where they fumble through the knots in Helena’s hair.

“You feel it,” she tells the other knee.

“I don’t,” says a voice, shaking. Helena thinks again about birds. Once she was very hungry, and she only had half a piece of bread, and she crumbled it delicately and lured a pigeon closer and closer and—

She closes her eyes and the memory is gone. Fingers in Helena’s hair, and who knows the last time she was touched. Fingers in Helena’s hair, and that other hand holding the gun, and Helena running out of blood inside of her to lose.

Maybe she’ll lose it all. Maybe she’ll give it up here, right now, bleed this whole room red if it meant she got to stay like this.

“What the hell am I going to do with you, Helena,” says Helena’s double.

“I don’t know,” Helena tells her, which means of course _you decide_. The shaky sigh she gets in response means _I know_ ; Helena can tell. She tilts her skull a bit more so the fingers can reach the curve of it, the downy hairs at the back of her neck. The leg underneath her isn’t trembling anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
